The Force Unleashed

by Grubkiller19

Darth Vader has a secret apprentice. His mission is to destroy the enemies of the Lord Vader, and he must prove himself worthy to rule the galaxy besides his master. But he must first contend with the Jedi Purge survivors who are now leading a growing rebellion against the Empire.

8. Part 8-Kashyyyk

Hey Folks, Grubkiller here.

Here's part 8 of this story.

Hope you enjoy.

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Rogue Shadow, Hyperspace.

The former General and Jedi Master might have looked—and smelled—like a brain-dead derelict, but Juno soon learned that, even in his much-reduced state, he possessed resources she could only marvel at. First, he had survived a duel with Starkiller. Second, he had somehow managed to stay hidden on one of the busiest places in the galaxy without the use of his eyes. Third, he knew codes and ciphers she had no hope of slicing …

For an hour after their refueling stop at Orondia, he had sat behind her in the jump seat, tapping madly into a keyboard and sending rapid-fire messages to unknown destinations. Every now and again she'd glanced back and tried to read surreptitiously. All she saw on the screen, however, was gibberish; the sound coming out of the earpiece she had loaned him, likewise. Whatever he was talking about, he was keeping it very much to himself.

"Can I help?" she'd finally asked him.

"No." He had leaned back into the seat and pushed the keyboard away. "It's done."

"You spoke to your friend?" Starkiller had asked, leaning in close from the copilot's seat.

Kota neither confirmed nor denied anything, given the choice. "Our destination is Kashyyyk," was all he had said.

"The Wookiee homeworld?" Juno had felt a sinking in her gut. "That's under Imperial rule now, isn't it?"

Kota had nodded.

"It'll be dangerous."

The old man had smiled at that, with no humor at all. "The entire galaxy is dangerous when you make an enemy of the Emperor." He had waved away any further questions. "Don't bother me now. I'm tired and I have a headache. You don't have any Andoan ale aboard, by any chance?"

"No," said Starkiller with a tight expression.

"Then let me sleep. You owe me that much."

Reclining the seat, he had put his hands behind his head and almost immediately begun to snore.

Starkiller had shrugged and told her that he was going back to the meditation chamber to prepare for whatever would come next.

And now she sat with PROXY beside her in the copilot's seat, wondering how she could prepare for something when she had no idea what it might be.

The warped perspectives of hyperspace slid rapidly by, simultaneously comforting and disconcerting. Familiar it might be to look at, but that environment was one explicitly hostile to human life. So was life on the run. Kota looked about as reliable as a drowned Wookiee. He and his mysterious contact could be leading them right into a trap. She and Starkiller had only just managed to scrape out of enough already while scouring the galaxy for the wretched old man …

She told herself not to be so surly. They'd all been through a lot, and it wasn't as if she had much choice. She had seen how Darth Vader rewarded loyalty. Returning to the Empire now, with two fugitives in tow, would be the fastest way to see herself shot. Her sleep was still disturbed by dreams of her long incarceration, in which the fear and hope of the final bullet still resonated.

Starkiller never talked about what was going on in his head, but she could tell that he, too, was troubled. His social skills were nonexistent. He wouldn't talk about his feelings, his past, or anything other than the present. Only the fact that he had saved her made it endurable.

He never talked, although she had prompted him to, about how he had managed to survive the terrible wound his Master had inflicted. In the absence of hard facts, she could only wonder. Prosthetics weren't the only answer she had come up with. Could he be so strong in the Force that he could stave off death, the ultimate enemy? Was that how he had survived against so many adversaries? Or had some disloyal Imperial really scooped his body out of the sky and shipped it to the secret lab, where it had been repaired without his former Master finding out?

The alternatives were too strange and horrible to contemplate.

Sometimes his screams woke her from restless sleep, ringing out from the meditation room and echoing through the ship. Sometimes he called Vader's name; other times he called hers, in fear, despair, or anger. More often, he just screamed as though his heart were being cut out.

Her heart broke to hear it. And despite the fact that her life had fallen to pieces ever since they'd met, she remained inclined to follow him. Still, if he expected her to nursemaid this crusty old Jedi on the brink of utter decrepitude, he would find out just how far her loyalty could be stretched …

PROXY suddenly stirred. She blinked out of her thoughts and guiltily tried to look as though she was working. The droid paid her not the slightest attention, however, unfolding from his seat and heading aft. The sound of his metal footsteps led to the meditation chamber; the hatch slid open, and PROXY went inside.

She hesitated a moment, then opened the screen that enabled her to spy on the activities within. In the deep gloom of the chamber, Starkiller knelt with his eyes closed and his back to the door, which her viewpoint covered. The faint shape of PROXY glowed all over for a second, morphing into a new shape. When the transformation was complete, he stood some centimeters taller and broader than before, with a beard and long hair, and wearing the standard robes of a Jedi Knight. The new expression he wore was one of determined solemnity.

Starkiller opened his eyes but didn't move until PROXY had activated a bright green lightsaber and raised it vertically in a balanced, two-handed pose on the right side of his body. Then Starkiller was up and defending himself so quickly that Juno had hardly seen him move. PROXY rained blows upon him with a speed and athleticism belying his construction. Spinning, tumbling, and cartwheeling all across the room, he was constantly on the offensive, employing swings that were both fast and powerful. Starkiller had his hands full deflecting them all. In the flickering light, she saw sweat standing out on his forehead.

The clash and crackle of lightsabers filled her earpiece. She turned the volume down so as not to disturb Kota's sleep. This wasn't the first time she had witnessed a duel between Starkiller and his training droid. They had fought like dervishes during the first days after fleeing the Empirical, the droid obviously helping him let off steam. But for those releases, she wondered if the pressure cooker of his mind would steadily build up stresses until he exploded.

She hadn't learned, however, to relax during them. Starkiller never lost—which was lucky, because PROXY spoke with disarming openness of his intention to kill his master should he ever find a chink in his armor. What life would be like after such a fatal mishap, she didn't like to think, so for now she tolerated the occasional practice sessions, even if she couldn't enjoy them.

PROXY didn't stay still for a second, attacking from the ground, the walls, the ceiling, even from midair. It was like watching a dance, but one in which the slightest slip could mean death. Starkiller danced with him long enough for her to worry, then he changed his own style to match that of the droid's—and suddenly she could see the difference between the human and the mechanical. Where PROXY had been fast, Starkiller was graceful as well. Where PROXY had simply slashed and stabbed, Starkiller applied flourishes to his offensive strikes. Where every move PROXY made involved his entire body, Starkiller could launch an attack with one finger, or block by shifting his foot a single centimeter.

The end came suddenly, with the green lightsaber stabbing deep into the belly of the unknown Jedi. Starkiller withdrew the blade and stepped backward. The other lightsaber deactivated and fell with a thunk to the metal floor. Starkiller's virtual opponent crumpled forward and had returned to PROXY's usual form before he hit the ground.

"I've failed again," came the muffled voice of the droid. "I'm sorry, master."

"It's not your fault, PROXY." Starkiller extended a hand and hauled the droid to his feet. "Ataru doesn't work properly without the Force. You managed a credible impersonation of it, though, especially in such a confined place."

"Thank you, master. Perhaps I will succeed next time."

Starkiller patted him with genuine affection. "You know, you did surprise me. I thought you were Kota."

"Now, he would make a fine training module." The droid fairly quivered at the praise. "Perhaps one day I will see him fight. That way I could observe how he moves and re-create him for you."

"Perhaps, PROXY," Starkiller said, his expression taking on a darker shade. "Is he awake yet?"

"I do not know, master, but our destination nears."

"Good." Together they left the chamber.

Juno switched off the screen and turned to be ready for them when they emerged into the cockpit.

She jumped when she saw Kota sitting up in his chair. For a moment she feared that he had heard everything she'd been listening to through her earpiece, but then she realized that what she had initially read as alertness, perhaps even suspicion, was actually the aftereffects of alcohol poisoning.

"I was beginning to worry that you'd died in your sleep," she said.

The corners of his lips pulled down. "I'm starting to wish that I had."

Starkiller entered with PROXY in tow. "Are we close?" he asked, taking the copilot's chair and turning toward her. The strange angularities of hyperspace reflected in his eyes.

She checked the instruments. "We'll be arriving any second now."

Right on cue, the view blurred and shifted into the more familiar starscape of the galactic backdrop. Kashyyyk was a patchwork sphere in green and blue hanging off the starboard bow. It was a beautiful world, but she could tell that it had seen hard times. The scars of orbital bombardment were still visible, years after they had been inflicted. She imagined the smoke that must have risen from those burning forests and was glad for the Wookiees that their home had been spared Callos's fate.

She employed the Rogue Shadow's advanced sensors to scan the space around the planet. It was dense with signals, but not much traffic, both mostly Imperial in origin. Several capital ships prowled the upper orbits, cannons and patrols at the ready. Quite a few transports were gathering about a point just out of sight around the planet's horizon. She urged the ship on in order to obtain a clearer view.

When the particular orbital location came into sight, it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. It was more than just an ordinary equatorial docking station, but at first glance the difference defied her imagination. Her eyes saw it; her mind rebelled.

A skyhook hung over Kashyyyk, floating on repulsors just outside the planet's upper atmosphere. A sturdy, utilitarian structure tethered to a cleared area far below, it obviously wasn't the local dictator's mansion or a resort for jaded Moffs. It wasn't finished yet, either. Dozens of cargo ships and construction droids surrounded its summit, glinting in the golden sunlight.

At the sight of the rare construction and the strong Imperial presence, she shook her head.

"I definitely think this mission is too dangerous now."

Even Starkiller seemed to be having second thoughts. "Your contact had better be reliable," he told Kota with a sour look.

"I trust him with my life." The hungover general didn't ask what they were seeing. Perhaps he already knew. "He kept me hidden on Nal Hutta, and he's an old ally of the Jedi Order."

"It's all very well to hear that," Juno said, "but without knowing who he is, you're putting us in a difficult spot."

"You're not the only ones reluctant to give names to strangers." The general huffed out his cheeks. "If you want my help, this is how you're going to get it. There's something very valuable to my friend down on Kashyyyk. You extract it for him and maybe he'll agree to help you fight the Empire."

Juno watched Starkiller's face. He showed no sign of uncertainty.

"Have we been spotted, Juno?"

"No. The cloaking device is operating at peak efficiency."

"Then take us down."

She mock-saluted to cover her unease. "It's going to be tricky keeping our heads low out here," she said as she turned the ship on its new course. "The traffic's not heavy enough to vanish into, but it is sufficient that someone will spot us if we go to ground. And we can't use the cloak forever. If the stygium crystals overheat, they'll be useless."

"Do what you can," Starkiller told her. "I'll try not to be too long."

"Is that what you told your last pilot?"

The words came out before she'd properly thought about them, and she regretted them instantly. Kota was listening, she told herself angrily. The ex-Jedi could never know who they were or what they had done, no matter what.

She glanced at Starkiller. His ears were burning. His expression looked furious.

Juno pushed the Rogue Shadow down into the atmosphere, hoping that the noise and turbulence of entry would cover the fact that she was furious at herself, too.

---

Swooping over rolling, green hills close to the coordinates Kota gave her, she brought the ship down low enough and long enough for Starkiller to leap into the forest canopy and shimmy down a wide-boled tree. She didn't stop to look behind her, waiting only until his voice over the comlink assured her that he was safe. Then she was flying the ship back up to space, where no messy contrails or lookouts could betray their presence. PROXY wandered back to the meditation chamber, perhaps to practice his Kota impersonation in private.

It took her half an hour to plot an orbit that would keep the ship well out of range of Imperial sensors. When she was done, she glanced over her shoulder. The general had slumped down into his seat with his arms folded and let his chin rest firmly on his chest. His skin was pale and drawn. His eye sockets were sunken beneath their bandages.

"Stay awake, General," she said.

"If there's really nothing to drink on this ship," Kota said with a surly drawl, "I'd rather you let me go back to sleep."

"Our friend down there might need your help."

"Your friend, not mine." Kota's lips pursed. "I don't even know who he is—or how you two came to own a ship like this."

She thought quickly. So the general had heard her comment about Starkiller's previous pilots. He was surely bringing it up now to needle her. The obvious option was to ignore him, but that would only rouse his suspicions even further. She had to tell him something, just as long as it wasn't the truth. Or at least the whole truth.

"We stole it," she said.

"Who from?"

"You don't need to know."

"I can guess. I've flown a few ships with cloaking devices down the years, but I can't pick out the sound of this one's hyperdrive. It's something new, probably military." Through the grouchiness he wore like his own disguising cloak, she could tell that he was testing her. "Our common enemy, perhaps."

She said nothing. He was a Jedi. If she gave away too much, he might match the Rogue Shadow to the ship in which Darth Vader's assassin had arrived at the TIE fighter factory—and that would be the end of everything.

He chuckled low in his throat, then coughed long and hard. "Don't worry, Juno," he said when his voice returned. "I'm hardly going to turn you in."

"I didn't think—"

"You're fugitives, just like me. You have nothing to lose."

Only our futures, she thought. Our slates are clean. We could start all over again, if we wanted to.

His face seemed to visibly age. She wondered if he was thinking of all the friends and loved ones he had lost over the years—not just to Order 66, but throughout his subsequent insurgency as well. And his sight, too. He had yet to tell her how he had come to be blinded, and she had never asked. She figured she could guess, and that he wouldn't ever want to talk about it, with her or anyone.

He stood with a grunt.

"If you won't give me any peace and quiet," he said, "I'm going to the cargo hold to sleep."

"You do that, General," she said, relieved that the moment was over and unsure what exactly had passed between them. "I'm going to see if I can find out what that skyhook is for."

He patted her dismissively on the shoulder and shuffled out of the cockpit, making his way by feel through the ship's hard-edged interior.

Juno checked the instruments to make sure they were still flying true. Starkiller hadn't called in yet. She wondered if that was a good sign or the worst imaginable …

---

With one desperate lunge of his lightsaber, the apprentice killed the last of the giant spiders that had ambushed him in the forest's lower levels. Hideous creatures with fat, red-pigmented bodies and tenacity beyond all reason—he almost wondered if they saw his potential escape as a personal affront as well as lost lunch—they had tracked him for over a kilometer before finally springing their trap. Barely had he begun to wonder at the dearth of Kashyyyk's dangerous undergrowth dwellers in his vicinity than five of the giant weavers had suddenly converged on him at once, swinging on thick strands of web with mandibles raised and dripping poison. He had barely survived the ambush.

Wiser now, and splattered in thick green ichor, he abandoned the undergrowth for the upper levels of the forest. It was taking him too long to approach the coordinates Kota had given him. Leaping from branch to branch, he ascended two hundred meters before the light started to brighten appreciably. Such was the perpetual gloom below that he felt as though he was ascending from deep underwater.

Kota hadn't told him what lay at the coordinates, and he hadn't commed the Rogue Shadow to find out. He wanted to learn for himself, to test the aging general's memory, reliability, and word.

Once he was sure he was out of the territory of the deadly spiders, he took a more level heading, albeit one still angling slightly upward. The forest canopy stretched at least another half a kilometer above him, consisting of the branches of mighty trees overlapping one another for support and carrying many thousands of species on their broad terraces. The kingdoms of animal, vegetable, and even mineral flourished everywhere he looked. Birds flew in complex flocks around nesting grounds like small cities. Insects crawled and swarmed in sappy splits in the bark. Soil from rotting vegetable matter and airborne dust pooled in the joints between branches and trunks, creating oases for leafy plants and spreading vines. The cool air was full of animal sounds and the rustling of leaves.

It was very different from Felucia, where everything seemed swollen with moisture and the Force, always on the brink of bursting. Here life was hard-edged and knife-sharp. Turning one's back on it was very, very dangerous.

Back in a relatively safe domain, leaping or swinging on vines from branch to branch, the apprentice was able to resume thinking about what he had seen from orbit.

A skyhook.

Startling enough on its own. Only a handful existed in the galaxy, and most of those were on Coruscant. But that wasn't what had struck him.

As the Rogue Shadow had descended to the world's surface, he had seen the skyhook from a different angle. Catching the last rays of the sun, it had resembled a fiery line reaching up into the sky—

—up to a point in low orbit where a cluster of tiny lights gathered.

He had seen that vision before, of the skyhook over Kashyyyk. It had come to him while he'd been unconscious in Darth Vader's secret laboratory, undergoing surgery for the terrible wounds his Master had inflicted. He had thought those visions nothing but dreams, meaningless fancies thrown up by his subconscious while his body was under duress.

Could they in fact have been glimpses of his future?

He didn't know. Certainly he had never before achieved foresight, not through meditation or any of the other trials he had set himself, but that didn't rule it out. He had been suspended between life and death for months. Who knew what straits he had endured on the road back to survival? It would be foolish to discount the possibility, for the visions might contain information that could help him on this particular journey, and others.

He struggled to recall more details of the vision, but found it difficult. His memories were jumbled. Something about the smell of raw meat, and Darth Vader talking about someone who had died. The hint of more was tantalizing but worthless on its own. He needed something tangible or else it would only distract him.

In the vision, the view of the skyhook seemed to come from a ground-level perspective. There couldn't be many places offering that on Kashyyyk. And there had been someone else with him. A young woman. Juno, perhaps?

He frowned, sensing that he was drifting from the truth of the vision, whatever that was. Not Juno. Someone else. Someone unknown.

Friend or foe?

The vision was exhausted, and so was he from trying to wring more from it. He had felt weighed down ever since he'd arrived on Kashyyyk. There was something in the air of the place, in the trees, in the color of the sun—and it bothered him. If the source wasn't the vision, then what could it be?

He abandoned the attempt and concentrated solely on negotiating the forest's upper fringes.

As he neared the coordinates Kota had given him, the sound of industry rose up over the natural ambience of Kashyyyk.

The first to reach his ears was that of a shuttle taking off. Its flat, metallic whine ramped up, almost to the level of being painful, then faded away to the west. Birds erupted from the trees around him, adding their own clamor to the aftermath. When they had settled down, he made out the clanking of Balmorran All Terrain Scout Transports. The awkward-looking, two-legged machines had earned the apprentice's unending dislike on Duro, where Darth Vader had sent him to put down a local despot who had grown too big for his Imperial boots. The machines were heavy and graceless, but troublesome in proficient hands. He hoped he could stay out of their gunsights for as long as he was on Kashyyyk.

Whirring landspeeders, buzzing vibrosaws, and the whine of a generator drifted to him as he neared their collective source. He was momentarily puzzled as to how such a large-sounding settlement had found a secure foothold in the dangerous forest. The answer came to him before long.

The forest ended as though a knife had been carved through it and the trees to one side scraped away. Raw, scarred dirt lay exposed to the naked sun for the first time in millennia, knotted with dead roots and mixed liberally with angular wood chips. The ground sloped down in a large valley to a choked riverbed, then angled up again to a summit that would have seemed prominent on any other world, but which remained dwarfed by the trees that crowded resentfully around the cleared area. On the summit of the far side of the valley was a lodge, clearly the home of someone important, doubling as an Imperial base, one bristling with weapons emplacements and satellite dishes, planted high above the forest with a shuttle landing pad jutting out of one side.

From where he crouched, he could see several steps leading up to the main entrance. A single shuttle rested on the pad, its arms folded demurely upward over its body. AT-STs strutted about below with an air of iron impregnability, shadowed by droids of all shapes and sizes. Stormtroopers patrolled the lodge's perimeter with blaster rifles at the ready, some herding Wookiees in groups of three or four. The planet's tall, heavily furred indigenes seemed to be wearing restraints, although it was hard to make out why across such a long distance.

The apprentice took all this in from a lofty vantage point on the very fringe of the forest, crouched on a slender bough like a Kowakian monkey-lizard. There was no obvious way into the lodge that he could see. Perhaps with a little more information, he could come up with some kind of plan.

From far below came the tinny crackle of a stormtrooper's vocoder.

Exactly what he needed.

Dropping with apparent weightlessness through the branches, he landed between the members of a two-man patrol. Before either could sound the alarm, he raised his left hand and ordered one of them to sleep. As that trooper sagged gently to the ground, the second fell under the influence of a different mind trick.

"You're not alarmed," he told the trooper. "I'm authorized to be here. In fact, you've been expecting me."

The man in the anonymous white helmet nodded. "Everything's in order, sir. Can't explain what's gotten into Britt here, though—" He kicked his unconscious fellow with one white boot.

"Britt isn't your concern. You want only to help me."

"Yes, sir. I'm at your disposal. How can I assist you?"

The white helmet tipped inquisitively to one side, and the apprentice gave thanks for the small minds of most stormtroopers.

"Tell me who's in charge here."

"Captain Sturn, sir."

"And where would I find him?"

"In the lodge with the guest, sir, if he's not out hunting."

"Who's the guest?"

"I don't know, sir, but we're under strict orders to keep them out of harm's way. These Wookiees are mindless brutes."

The apprentice ignored the speciesist slur. "Is this person a guest, or a hostage?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Can you show me to the guest quarters?"

"I'm not authorized for that area, sir." Again the helmet tilted. "Why don't you ask Captain Sturn these questions?"

His hold on the stormtrooper's mind was slipping. Before it could fall away entirely, the apprentice asked him about the Wookiees.

"What are we doing with them, sir? Why, giving them what they deserve. Filthy, mindless animals. Hey, you're not one of those sympathetic types, are you? One of them tore my platoon leader limb from limb, right in front of me. Kill them all, I would, like Captain Sturn—"

"Enough." He waved his hands across the stormtrooper's face and stepped back to avoid his collapse. Leaving the pair where they lay, he melted into the shadows of the undergrowth and began to circle the enormous clearing. The lodge at its heart was built tough, with no obvious weak points. The far side projected over the ridge, into virgin forest. He didn't want to get entangled in another web-weaver ambush if he could avoid it. By any account, it'd take an army to get in there, or firepower above and beyond anything he had at hand—unless he stole some of the Imperials' concussion grenades, or got his hand on a blaster cannon …

A slow smile crept across his face. He didn't need anything like that. He had the dark side of the Force on his side. Edging back up into the trees, he set out to find the best possible place to launch an assault.

Only once, when the scent of a distant burn-off hit his nostrils, did the strange feeling of disorientation strike him again. He put it firmly out of his mind. Dozens of stormtroopers lay in his immediate future, and all of them would be keen to keep him from his goal. He would give them cause to reconsider.

---

Within half an hour of slicing into the local Imperial mainframe, Juno had exactly half an answer.

The purpose of the skyhook was to ferry Wookiee slaves from the surface of Kashyyyk into low orbit, from which point they would be taken elsewhere.

Where they were to be taken, however, was hidden by a deeper level of security than she could penetrate. And the matter of why was completely obscured. After that productive half hour had come a frustrating search through every available record, looking for any kind of clue but finding none. She was as much in the dark on that point as she had been at the beginning.

She did learn that Darth Vader himself had visited the planet years earlier, but that appeared to have been on a completely unrelated matter.

Leaning back into her seat, she ran her fingers through her hair and stretched. Starkiller was busy on the ground. Kota was back in the hold. PROXY was still keeping himself amused. It had only just occurred to her that, for the moment, she was completely alone.

Leaning forward again, her fingers began tapping at the keys. Certain Imperial records were duplicated all across the galaxy. They came with every invading force, updating local networks and keeping themselves up to date in turn by downloading new information from capital ships passing through. Thus the administration of the Empire kept itself consistent across many thousands of inhabited worlds—for how else would distant governors know about new laws and appointments, or wanted criminals who might stray across their borders?

Data from the Imperial Academy was part of that automatic download. Encrypted, of course, but Juno knew the keys by heart. She told herself that she was just idly curious. Callos had been less than a year ago. She had heard nothing about her former friends and colleagues in all that time. It would be inhuman not to wonder …

The Black Eight Squadron was an elite unit with a reputation for discipline and ruthlessness. From the outside, she could see how its composition was carefully maintained by Darth Vader to ensure that both qualities remained unsullied. Leadership and pilots frequently turned over, a fact obscured by the air of mystique surrounding the squadron. Those inside never talked about their wingmates or missions; those outside never speculated. They got the job done. That was all that mattered.

She had been proud to fly as squadron leader, but her time at the helm had been brief. That, she learned, was normal. Her predecessor, whom she had flown with only twice, had lasted barely longer than her. His predecessor had lasted just a single month before being transferred by Darth Vader to a position she couldn't trace. Both pilots were now listed as deceased.

She wondered if either of them had flown for Starkiller.

Turning away from that fruitless line of speculation, she investigated the careers of those pilots she had flown with. A third of them were still in the squadron. A third were dead—killed in action, she presumed, although only half were listed as such. The remainder had been promoted.

Reading the list of advancements, her hackles rose. A pilot with the call sign Redline had been promoted to head of squadron in her absence. Redline was, in her experience, the coldest, cruelest, least considerate being she had ever flown with. She had had serious concerns about his mental health, describing him in her flight logs as psychopathic and consistently penalizing him for using excess force. He was one of three under her who had complained about the withdrawal from Callos. The squadron should have stayed, they argued, and finished the job.

The world had died. She couldn't see what was left to finish. And now here he was, running the most feared TIE fighter squadron in all the Empire.

She could see how that fit Darth Vader's twisted vision of the galaxy. What she had once considered a close-knit unit, almost a family, she now knew was utterly dysfunctional—the product of a tyranny driven by fear and greed. Had she stayed with the Black Eight, she would have been forced to commit atrocities like Callos over and over again—as Redline was no doubt doing even now—or she would have resisted and been shot for disobeying orders.

She understood, but that didn't mean she liked it, not one bit. Other promising pilots had been completely looked over. The replacement she had recommended, Chaser, was still flying fourth. And Youngster, the pilot who had followed her into the squadron, a cheerful graduate whom she had felt sure would pursue her rapidly up the ranks of enlisted officers, was …

It took her fifteen minutes to find out what had happened to him. He had left the squadron—alive, apparently, one of the few who had transferred while still able to fly—but from there his progress was difficult to track. He had suffered a change of heart, it seemed, but not one great enough to result in execution. He had flown transports for a while and then returned to active duty as a sentry around Imperial construction sites. He had seen combat in several hot spots, but nothing special. His latest posting …

Juno stared at the answer for a minute before accepting that it could be true. Youngster was stationed on Kashyyyk.

A terrible mixture of yearning and fear swept through her. With a flick of a switch, she could open a comm channel and hail her old wingmate. His familiar voice would fill the cockpit and for a moment, just a minute or two, she could feel as though she belonged again. She could roll back time and forget about betrayals and the uncertain future stretching ahead of her. She could be an accomplished Imperial pilot again, secure in the knowledge that nothing could ever change that.

One switch. She didn't even have to say who she was. They could verbally handshake and that would be enough. What harm would that do?

She shuddered. Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap and she kept them there lest they betray her.

She couldn't go back, not even for a minute. Hailing an Imperial squadron while Starkiller was on the ground risked blowing everything. Nothing was worth that. Not even talking to someone she had once called an ally and now considered her enemy, most likely. If he ever learned that she still existed …

Her shaking hands returned to the keyboard. Slowly, she typed in her own name.

Her files were no longer restricted. In fact, they came up immediately. She read the summary of her career as she would her own obituary. In one very real sense, it was exactly that.

Spy … traitor … executed by Imperial command.

There was no room for doubt. She could not go back. She didn't even recognize the life she was supposed to have had. Her record had been tampered with. All her major achievements were gone. Even Callos didn't rate a mention. She had been reduced to an inept fighter pilot who had somehow scraped a lucky break into the galaxy's top squadron and then let her team down. Worse, she turned on them. The woman in the record had deserved that fictional blaster bolt. That was exactly what the old Juno Eclipse would have believed.

The old Juno Eclipse no longer existed. The new Juno Eclipse was angry that she had been so easily reduced, even in an official record she no longer cared about. Or believed. If this had happened to her, how many times had it happened to others branded traitor—like her own mother?

She wondered for an instant what her father thought. Then she decided she didn't care.

At least she was believed dead. She clung to that certainty, even as fury seethed in her. And she was fighting back.

The rasp of Kota's throat made her jump and guiltily clear the screen—before remembering that he was blind.

"I think the time has come to check on your friend," the general said. "He's been quiet a little too long."

"You're right. And I'm sure he'd like to know what I've found out." She outlined the news that Wookiee slaves were going to be ferried elsewhere for an unknown reason. "Do you think your friend in the Senate knows anything about this?"

"I'm sure of it," Kota said.

"Do you think that's why we're really here?"

"I think it's possible to fix two problems with one solution. Or make the attempt, anyway."

"I guess we'll see what we will see." She began opening a comm channel, then realized what she had said. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize," Kota said gruffly. "It's just a figure of speech."

All conversation between them died. From Starkiller's comlink came the sound of screaming machinery.

---

Juno was trying to tell him something, and it sounded like it might be important.

Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

The foot of an AT-ST walker came down right next to him, making every tooth in his head shake. The apprentice didn't break stride. He had timed his run perfectly, dodging the concussion grenades and energy bolts fired by the gunner and approaching from underneath, where the plating was weakest. The bulky head swiveled and turned above him, trying to get a bead on the unarmored man who dared single-handedly attack it. He could read the pilot's disbelief secondhand through the movement of the machine.

The apprentice took a deep breath and executed an acrobatic aerial somersault that brought his lightsaber into range of both knee joints, three control junctions, and the drive engine. The AT-ST shuddered midstep as the damage he had inflicted registered in its complex systems. The endless pounding of its weapons faltered.

The apprentice touched the ground and stopped dead. With a groan of tortured metal, the AT-ST managed a half step then dropped nose-forward into the ground. Dust rose up from the blasted soil. Before it could settle, the apprentice was moving again, dodging a stream of blasterfire from a stormtrooper cannon emplacement to the right of the lodge's main steps. Two more AT-STs were closing on him from either side, hoping to hem him in.

His smile hadn't faded an iota. The troopers' aim left a lot to be desired. Every projectile that came within reach he deflected back at either its point of origin or the lodge's main door, but so many of them were missing completely that the rest discharged uselessly into the dirt. He ran toward the troopers, deliberately making himself an easier target. White helmets lifted in surprise, then came down in concentration.

One lucky shot, he imagined them thinking. Just one lucky shot.

He would show that there was no such thing as luck. Not against him, anyway.

A blistering barrage of energy fire encased him. He began directing some of it back at the approaching AT-STs, leaving black scorch marks on their forward armor. Drivers and gunners intensified their charge, knowing that their approach made them better targets, too. A rain of concussion grenades fell toward him. He deflected them all toward the lodge's door, careful to avoid anything resembling a guest quarters.

Sirens wailed. Stormtroopers screamed. The whining of engines grew louder and louder.

When the two AT-STs were within ten meters of him, forming an equilateral triangle with the stormtrooper cannon emplacement, he stopped. His lightsaber spun like a propeller, moving without his conscious thought. The Force streamed through him like a lightning bolt, fueling his instincts and filling him with strength. For a full second he closed his eyes and let his arms move in perfect synchrony with the energy bolts. He wasn't even part of the equation anymore. He was a spectator, a privileged observer in a deadly but beautiful ballet.

He lowered his head and concentrated. The AT-STs were approaching more slowly now, their drivers and gunners sensing victory: no ordinary human could survive such a barrage for long. They were wrong a thousand times over. When the AT-STs started to accelerate again, their drivers were taken momentarily by surprise. Then they pulled back on their controls, to no avail. Their heavy metal beasts steadily picked up speed, trajectories shifting with each lurching step. Accelerating unstoppably, they converged on a different point from the one they had originally been aiming for: not the apprentice any longer, but a patch of empty ground just meters away.

The apprentice spun and opened his eyes a split second before they collided. Raising his free hand, he sent a powerful bolt of lightning into the buckling armor shells. The energy raced along wires and cables deep into the cargo bays and ammunition stores, tripping safeties and triggering detonators. Energy begat energy.

He jumped vertically upward a single instant before the first explosion and was lifted higher still by the blast of hot air that erupted in his wake. He tumbled and twisted with the Force singing through him, buoyed by the delicious sense of weightlessness and a death well avoided.

A ball of red flame spread across the ground, enveloping the cannon emplacement. White-armored bodies flew everywhere.

He reached the apex of his leap and began to descend. It was almost a shame to come down to the ground, but he knew he couldn't fly forever. Rolling to shed a slight excess of momentum, he was up on his feet immediately, surrounded by wreckage and wreathed in smoke. A quick glance over his shoulder told him all he needed to know. Only one of the ruined AT-STs was still standing. Thick black smoke poured from its shattered viewport. The other was in pieces, blown apart by its own weaponry.

The battleground was still. His ears rang for almost half a minute before the noise faded. All was silent apart from the ticking of metal as it cooled. The Imperial resistance had crumbled. Either he had killed them all, or the survivors had fallen back to another defensive position.

"Now, what were you saying?" he asked Juno as he walked up the steps leading to the lodge's front door. The armored plating that had once kept it secure hung from a single melted hinge, destroyed by the shots he had deflected from cannons and walkers.

"The skyhook," Juno told him. "It's for taking Wookiee slaves offplanet by force."

"That's not important now," broke in Kota's rough-edged voice. "Where are you?"

The apprentice described the lodge as he stepped into its ruined foyer. He kept his lightsaber at the ready, but the only beings in evidence were a trio of nervous protocol droids. "There seems to be no one about."

"You're very close to your objective. Don't allow yourself to be distracted."

"Want to tell me what I'm looking for?"

"Patience, boy. You'll know."

The apprentice grunted an affirmative. He strode down the main corridor, kicking open doors and using the Force to enhance his physical senses. The smell of burning food came from the kitchen. He ignored it.

"Something …," he said, an instinct leading him toward the rear of the lodge. "Someone …"

He turned a corner and entered a long wooden corridor lined with two-dimensional ceramic artwork. Two stormtroopers and an Imperial Guard stood watch over a locked door at its end. The troopers raised their blaster rifles as he came into sight. The guard's saber-staff was already activated.

"Hold on," he told Kota. "I think I'm getting warm."

The troopers started firing before he had taken two paces toward them. They were dead long before he reached the door, killed by their own reflected fire. The Imperial Guard lasted barely as long, felled with four swift lightsaber strokes then shocked with lightning as he dropped backward to the ground. The apprentice nodded, satisfied that his skills had improved since Nar Shaddaa.

Looking back over his shoulder, he nodded again. Not a single piece of art had been damaged.

My good deed for the day, he thought as he burned out the lock and used the Force to push the door in.

The room on the far side was luxuriously appointed, and tastefully so, considering its deceased owner. Dozens of different woods provided subtle contrasts among walls, cornices, floors, and ceilings, with a huge bay window on the far side overlooking the forest. In the distance, clearly visible against the blue sky, was the bright line of the skyhook.

Instead of the local despot, he found himself facing the back of a slender, hooded woman in a white skin suit which hugged her curves quite well, and a common cape. She stood facing the view with a blue-and-white astromech droid at her side, and although she didn't turn to see who had blown in the door he could tell that she was closely aware of his presence.

He took two steps toward her and activated his comlink so Juno and Kota could overhear.

"I should have expected that the Emperor would send an assassin," the woman said, sounding more irritated than worried. "It's a coward's tactic."

"I do not serve the Emperor."

The woman turned and lowered her hood. Not a woman, he realized, but a teenager barely his age with brown hair hanging in looped ponytails over her shoulders. She studied him with a world-weary skepticism.

"I told Captain Sturn to spare me the charade, and now I'm telling you—"

"No, really," he said, raising a hand to cut her off. "I'm here with Master Kota."

"Master Kota is dead, killed above Nar Shaddaa. My father—"

She caught herself.

"Your father?" He took a step closer, putting several pieces of a puzzle together. Kota's friend … the "very valuable" item he was supposed to extract … "How long has your father been feeding Kota information about Imperial targets?"

She looked at him warily. "How do you know—"

"Master Kota told me himself. He survived Nar Shaddaa. We were sent to find you. I think you're supposed to come with me now."

Her skepticism increased. "I can't leave, not while the planet is enslaved."

"Is that what you're here for?"

"No." Her answer was clipped and angry. "I'm a Senatorial observer appointed by the Emperor himself. My job is to oversee the construction of that monstrosity." She cocked her head at the view of the skyhook towering over the forest. "He can't kill me, but he can keep me busy and send a message to my father at the same time. A coward, as I said, but a clever one, well versed in the arts of coercion and manipulation."

The apprentice nodded his understanding.

"I'm not so harmless myself," the young woman said, pointing with her chin at the lightsaber. "I know what that is. If you're truly a Jedi, then you'll understand why I can't leave."

"But your father—"

"My father isn't here." She turned back to the window. "Once the skyhook is complete, the Empire will be able to shuttle Wookiee slaves in earnest. Entire villages will be taken offworld in a matter of days. Artoo-Detoo?"

The little astromech rolled over to the pair, stopping between its mistress and the apprentice. Chirping and whistling, it projected a standard bluish white hologram of a massive construct, circular in shape, with buttressed sides and reinforced anchors digging deep into exposed bedrock. The image rotated slowly in the air while Leia talked the apprentice through her plan.

"Artoo and I have been studying the skyhook from here. I think I know how to take it down. These are the moorings. Disable them and the skyhook will detach from the planet, causing a chain reaction that should destroy the orbital platform before it can be put to use."

The apprentice studied the image, looking for some way of discerning the construction's scale. He found it in the form of a tiny human figure, dwarfed by the moorings. That wasn't very encouraging.

"Destroying it won't stop the Empire for long," he said. "They'll just build another one."

"Eventually, maybe. But you'll give the remaining Wookiees a chance to disappear." She folded her arms across her chest as though daring him to disagree. "Back the way you came, there's a tube transport that leads down to the forest floor. It'll be crawling with Imperials, clearing out the undergrowth, but it'll take you to the base of the skyhook."

"All right," he said, despite serious misgivings. If he wanted to get her offworld, he would need to do as she said. "But what about you?"

"My shuttle is still on the landing platform, I presume."

"Yes, but I won't make any promises about the pilot."

"What makes you think I need one?" She flashed him a smile over her shoulder, and added more gravely, "Please tell my father I'm safe."

"I will."

Then she was gone.

---

"Did you get all that?" Starkiller asked from the planet's surface.

"We did," Juno replied, feeling decidedly ambivalent about the new development. While glad that they had managed to achieve the objective given to them by Kota's friend in the Senate, their continued proximity to danger made her sweat in her seat. Starkiller wasn't likely to be coming off the ground anytime soon, and the stygium crystals weren't going to last forever. "Are you going to do as she says?"

"I'm already doing it," he replied.

"You and your one solution," she muttered to Kota.

"Is everything all right up there?" Starkiller asked her.

"We're killing time," she said. "Where do you think the Wookiees are being taken—and why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. They're strong and smart. If it weren't for their tendency to rip people's heads off when they get angry, they'd make excellent slaves."

"There are ways around that," said Kota dourly.

"What do you mean?" asked Juno.

"Attachment," he told her. "Wookiees have a keen sense of family. The bonds among them are exceedingly tight." His lips twisted. "That's why the Jedi didn't have families. It was the only way to remain objective."

"Being objective obviously wasn't enough," Juno said.

The general just scowled.

"Kota," came Starkiller's voice from the ground. "I want you to pass her message on to her father, whoever she is."

"All right," the general said, turning to his keyboard. "I'll try."

Silence fell on the comms. The pair in the Rogue Shadow waited wordlessly for some time, he tapping at the keys, wrapped in unhappy thoughts, and she wondering what was happening to Starkiller on the ground. She scanned the ship's data banks for information on Kashyyyk's forests and wasn't remotely reassured. If he wasn't being shot at by Imperials converging on the scene of his earlier disturbance, he was most likely being eaten by blastails or smashed to a pulp by terrible minstyngar.

After a prolonged period of typing, punctuated by irritated snorts and worried grumbles, Kota pushed aside the keyboard and erupted from his chair. With an explosive "Gah!" he stumbled out of the bridge, patting the walls to find his way.

"Something wrong?" she called after him.

He didn't reply. With a hiss, the door to the meditation room opened.

She shrugged and let him be. If he didn't want to talk, she couldn't force him.

Moving on from Kashyyyk's many perils, she turned to researching skyhook design instead. That left her distracted but hardly reassured.

With a slight crackle, Starkiller's voice came over the comlink. "General Kota?"

"He's not here right now," she said.

"Get him," he said. "I … I think I've found something."

There was an edge to his voice, something new and strange. She didn't hesitate.

"Kota!" she called over her shoulder. "Kota, get out here!"

The general appeared in an instant. With no wall tapping or hesitation, he burst out of the meditation room and fairly ran into the cockpit. "What is it?"

She pointed at the comlink. He patched in, and Starkiller repeated what he had said before.

"What have you found, exactly?" the general asked him, a concerned look spreading across his face.

"Just an old hut," Starkiller said. "A ruin, really. But it feels familiar." Juno could hear the strain in his voice. "I've been sensing something strange ever since I arrived on Kashyyyk. There's a great darkness in the forest. And—yes, sadness. Something happened here."

Kota spoke with urgent emphasis. "Turn away, boy. Get on with your mission. There are some things you aren't ready to face."

"Why?" Starkiller asked. "What's inside?"

"How should I know? My link to the Force has been cut." Kota sank into the copilot's seat, his expression hard. "If you go inside, you'll face whatever's in there alone."

Starkiller offered no response to that. Juno perched on the edge of her seat, waiting for him to say something, anything. Through the hiss of the open comm channel, she thought she could hear him breathing.

"What's he doing?" she asked Kota.

He silenced her with a gesture.

The minutes dragged by, and slowly Juno convinced herself that Starkiller hadn't gone into the hut at all. Despite the fearful yearning she'd heard in his voice, he had heeded Kota's advice and walked on by, and was even now nearing the base of the skyhook. Soon he would call in for advice and her nebulous fears would be dispelled. She would laugh and feel foolish, and everything would be back to normal.

Then Kota stiffened beside her, as though touched by something cold and clammy on the back of the neck. A muscle in his right cheek twitched. He gasped aloud and reached for the control console for support.

He sagged.

"I told you to leave it alone, boy," he said with a sigh.

Juno supposed that normal might be something she'd never experience again.

---

The Apprentice stood before the ruin he'd found, wondering why this one had caught his eye out of the dozen or so he'd stumbled across elsewhere. A decade or two ago this particular patch of the forest had been a clearing, home to a small village, home perhaps to a mixed community of Wookiees and offworlders who wanted to feel the dirt beneath their feet. A dry creekbed snaked through the abandoned settlement, choked now with vines, ferns, and other native plants. The ruins had surrendered to the undergrowth, which was steadily overtaking it, but enough remained to show that the reason for the village's abandonment was not entirely natural.

Burned wood was evidence of fire. Circular, deep burns with a faint spiral pattern were evidence of energy weapons. Both were visible everywhere he looked.

He stepped closer. Thirty seconds ago he had been focused on his mission. Now, confronted by the ruin, he was utterly derailed. Calling Kota hadn't helped. It only made him more curious. What would he have to face alone? Had the aging general sensed something through the Force, for all his protestations about being severed from it?

The truncated cone of the largest hut had split on falling. There was a clear entrance through that rent. It looked—his breath caught—it almost looked as though someone had blasted their way into it. Except here the evidence of energy weapons lacked the regular spirals of blasterfire. These scars were in straight lines, curving only slightly toward the end.

Not blasted, then, but sliced …

A breeze swept through the overgrown clearing, making something move within the ruined hut. He brought his lightsaber up but didn't ignite it. The movement didn't come from one of Kashyyyk's many predatory species. It was a piece of cloth, fluttering. Leaning forward so his head was in shadow, he saw the remains of a long tapestry, tangled around an errant plank. There was a symbol on the tapestry, of a stylized hunting bird, perhaps, with wings and beak proudly upraised.

A strange feeling shivered through him, as though he had been touched by someone from another universe.

Unable to stop himself, he stepped into the shadowy ruin and touched the faded symbol with the fingers of his left hand. The space within was a mess, full of broken furniture and giant, alien cobwebs. The air was cool but very, very close. He felt suffocated, claustrophobic. He turned back to the door as though to flee, and stopped at the sight of a small blue crystal lying on the ground at his feet.

Trembling, he knelt to examine it more closely. The gleaming gem was as large as the knuckle of his little finger and looked like nothing so much as the focusing crystal of a lightsaber.

His head was swimming with questions and speculations. Why had he been drawn to this place? What had happened here that it should mean anything to him at all?

In the act of standing, he was plunged into a vision more forceful than any he had experienced before.

---

Kashyyyk was burning.

The fires were visible from space, and so were the vast swaths of smoke poisoning the air. The Imperial blockade, comprised of Venator-class Star Destroyers, surrounding the planet was impervious and relentless. Observers weren't allowed in; refugees weren't allowed out. The only people moving to and from the surface were stormtroopers.

And him.

The shuttle carrying him landed on a cliff overlooking a deep, blue bay. Battles raged around him as rebel Wookiees fought with Imperial Clone Troopers, who had the blue markings of the 501st Legion, supported by AT-ATs, not caring that they were hopelessly outnumbered. Huge forest forts spread through the canopy like underground tunnels, ferrying resistance fighters and ammunition to the fringes, where the fighting was fiercest. Energy weapons struggled to penetrate the centuries-old bark of mature wroshyr trees, but set fire and flesh instantly alight.

The apprentice saw all this as though in a dream. He was part of the dream, but not a participant in it. Although he tried to speak and turn his head, he could not. The vision didn't allow him to change anything that had already happened.

He could see a familiar figure entering the battlefront

With one black-gloved hand he waved for the hatch to open. The ramp was already extended. Striding heavily onto the planet, he stood with hands on hips and took in the view firsthand. His black cape fluttered in a hot, ashen wind.

There was something wrong with him. His senses were muted, filtered somehow, as though he viewed the world through artificial means. His limbs felt distant, numbed. And the sound of his breathing was strained, almost mechanical …

An Imperial officer rushed up to him.

"Lord Vader," he gasped. "We were ambushed upon arrival, but I have the situation well in—"

"I have no interest in your failures, Commander," the apprentice said in his Master's voice. All around them lay the bodies of Imperial clone troopers, strewn in pieces across the ground. "I am here on a mission of my own."

Leaving the officer sweating with relief, the apprentice in Darth Vader's garb stalked away.

With each step of those heavy boots, he flinched. Nothing he did could redirect that fateful march. He didn't care if he was seeing the past through his Master's eyes or seeing his own future—one in which he'd been forced to become Darth Vader, through some strange surgical substitution—but he was certain he didn't want to see any more.

His field of vision blurred. A large, spinning ax had come out of nowhere. His left hand came up, deflecting it deep into the ground with the power of the dark side. His right drew and ignited his lightsaber with one rapid motion. Turning, he faced a trio of Wookiee soldiers led by a truly huge member of the alien species, with a snarling visage and light armor over dark brown fur. The creature's roar was almost physically painful, even through the deadening of his senses.

Past or future, his limbs moved with strength and surety, bringing his lightsaber up to slice a second axe in two, then stepping forward to meet the berserker head-on. Two blows saw the warrior in pieces, having laid not a claw on his black armor. The pair of Wookiees bringing up the rear fared no better.

He didn't waste time gloating. As soon as the last body fell, still twitching, to the ground, he was on his way again, away from the cliffs, following unknown clues deeper into the landscape.

The apprentice was swept up in the carnage each time a Wookiee fighting group encountered them, but in between, as "Darth Vader" pressed relentlessly on, he felt like screaming.

When he rounded a bend and saw a village laid out before him beside a thin, trickling stream, the apprentice prayed that he would be ambushed and killed before the vision could play out.

It wasn't to be, and he could only despair as Vader Force-leapt to the first of the wooden platforms that jutted from the bole of a youthful wroshyr tree. The hut the apprentice had entered—surely in the future now—loomed high above, its wooden sides gleaming with resin. Numerous tapestries waved in the breeze, among them one containing the striking bird symbol he had found among the ruins. Wookiees had spotted the intruder to the village and rapidly retracted a series of rope ladders leading to the platform below before Vader could ascend.

A tall, human figure in brown robes appeared on one of the hut's balconies, looking down at Vader. He stood with hands on hips, flanked by menacing Wookiee warriors. Small touches marked him as someone who had lived among the indigenes a long time. His face looked faintly, impossibly familiar.

"Turn back, Dark Lord," he called in a commanding voice. "Whatever you want, you won't find it here."

"You can't disguise yourself from me," Vader replied, "Jedi."

The man stiffened and gestured. Wookiee warriors swung in on ropes and vines from surrounding trees, converging with wild whoops and roars on the lone figure in black below. The apprentice's vision dissolved into an unending stream of violent images as, one after another, each of his attackers fell from the platform with limbs slashed and neck broken. His lightsaber was a crimson blur—and slowly, inevitably, everything he saw was painted horribly red.

When the warriors were spent, he turned his attention to the struts of the hut. Raising one hand, Vader dug deep into the dark side, bending and cracking the ancient wood. It resisted, as strong but not as brittle as metal could be. It twisted and flexed, releasing energy slowly rather than snapping in two.

But that didn't save the people above. The hut tossed like a ship on stormy seas. Wookiees leapt or swung to safety.

"Grab hold of something," the robed man called to them. "Quickly!"

Vader clenched his fist, hard, and the support struts finally cracked. He extended both hands, and the hut shook from side to side. With a sickening sound, the last of its supports gave way and the hut tumbled to the platform below. Wookiees flew bodily in all directions. Splinters and dust filled the air.

Vader didn't flinch as the hut crashed directly in front of him, split open like an overripe fruit.

He didn't move until, out of the thick, dusty haze, he glimpsed a bright blue lightsaber—and its wielder, coming for him like a ghost.

They fought back and forth across the wooden platform, the tall man's reach a match for Vader's but his strength not as profound. Whoever he was, combat was not his strong point. He had an understanding of the ancient Shii-Cho style but barely a smattering of more advanced Makashi. His attacks were simple to deflect; his defenses, relatively easy to penetrate. Vader toyed with him awhile, then pressed him hard against the side of the fallen hut, giving him no more ground to retreat to.

One telekinetic push saw the man flung through the rent in the fallen hut. His lightsaber flew in a different direction. The pommel shattered into a dozen pieces, its blue focusing crystals scattering like jewels.

Vader strode into the hut, where he used the Force to grip the man around his throat and wrench him into the air. His bright red lightsaber pointed directly at the man's chest.

Victory.

And yet, on the cutting edge of perception, reason to reconsider.

Vader cocked his armored head.

"I sense someone far more powerful than you nearby. Your Master … Where is he?"

The choking Jedi Knight struggled to speak. "The dark side has clouded your mind. You killed my Master years ago."

"Then you will now share his fate."

Vader raised his blade to cut down the Jedi Knight, but before he could swing it the lightsaber suddenly flew from his hand. The Dark Lord wheeled around to attack, his free hand raised to crush whoever dared oppose him.

He hesitated, an uncommon move for Darth Vader—

—and the apprentice felt his mind spin with shock—

—at the sight of a human child standing in the corner of the hut, dirty and bruised by the fall, dressed in clothes bearing Wookiee touches similar to those of the man still hanging in the air behind the Dark Lord. The boy held Darth Vader's lightsaber in both hands. The tip danced, but only slightly.

"Run!" choked the Jedi. "Run now! Don't look back!"

"Ah," said Vader with dawning understanding. "A son."

Turning back to the father, he clenched his left fist. The awful sound of bone cracking was clearly audible—as was the boy's sudden gasp of horror.

Vader turned back to the child, and froze.

The tableau stayed that way for a small infinity: father dying, child watching, murderer standing patiently between them, as though waiting for fate's dice to fall.

Then three Clone stormtroopers burst into the hut, led by an Imperial officer. Drawn by sounds of combat in the village, or perhaps just shadowing their Dark Lord's path across the forest world, they ran in with weapons drawn and broke the moment forever.

"My lord?" the officer started to ask, confused.

He got no farther. With a flick of his fingers, Vader had his lightsaber back in his hand. The officer and troopers backed away as their Master approached. One of them sensed the imminence of their deaths and fired his blaster ineffectually. The bolt ricocheted off the crimson blade into the wall of the hut, leaving a black burn.

In a second, it was over.

The boy watched, terrified, as the man covered from head to foot in black armor killed his own allies. His every move was brutal but at the same time possessing a deadly elegance, like the stalking moves of a wild walluga. Each stab and slash found its mark.

He had never seen anything so beautiful—or so horrible.

When it was done, the man in black loomed over him and grabbed him by the arm. Thinking the moment of his death had come, the boy didn't resist.

"Come with me." The deep, hollow words were worse than blows. "More will be here soon."

As he was wrenched from the hut, the boy twisted his head to snatch one last glimpse of his home. Tipped over it might have been, broken and full of still-smoking bodies, but all the boy saw was the body of the dead Jedi Knight on the floor. One hand lay outstretched with fingers curled, as though clutching for something that was no longer there …

---

The Apprentice blinked. He was standing, frozen, staring at the very spot where the bodies had once lain. There was no sign of them now, not even a bone. Scavengers must have carried them off, or they had been thrown free when the platform the hut had fallen onto had in turn collapsed. There was only the crystal, which had somehow come to be folded tightly in his hand. It looked just like one of those from the fallen Jedi Knight's lightsaber, which the boy might have liked to play with when he was younger, for comfort.

His face twisted into a snarl. Looked just like … might have … He was trying to validate the vision, when it was nothing really but a dream. A fantasy. The truth was that he had been bothered by something ever since he had arrived on Kashyyyk—an irrational feeling that something was wrong, which probably related more to his alliance with Kota than anything to do with his own past. Darth Vader had raised him; he didn't need to imagine parents or a home to give himself meaning. He was just fabricating a story out of thin air.

But he had seen the skyhook in one of his near-death visions—a bright line extending high up into the sky—and he realized now that the figure standing in front of the skyhook had been none other than the girl he had met in the lodge. If his visions contained some truth, why not this one, too?

And the face of the Jedi Knight was the very same one he had seen while dueling Kota …

Time slowed. The air felt as thick as honey. He strained against it, fearing that he was about to succumb to another hallucination, but he remained in control of his limbs. A shadow fell over the hut, as though a cloud had blocked the sun. He shivered and raised his hands to hug himself.

Cold metal touched his skin. He looked down in horror at what had become of his fingers. They were artificial claws, like the hands of a surgical droid, with blades sharp enough to cut bone. His wrists and forearms were part flesh, part machine. The unnatural amalgamation continued up to his shoulders and disappeared under a high, metal collar that protected his neck. What skin was visible on his wrists was blistered and scarred, as though burned many times over by ferociously high heat.

More than just his hands and arms had changed. His clothes were different, too. Instead of the new uniform Darth Vader had given him, he now wore a ribbed vest of flexible armor plates and a series of leather belts around his waist. From the belts hung a collection of grisly trophies—lightsabers most prominent among them. Under the tight black garments, his body felt strange, more mechanical than alive.

With shaking hands, he raised his metal fingers to touch his face. Metal blades touched armor with a piercing squeak. His face was hidden behind a mask, as deathless and horrible as his Master's. His breathing was loud in his ears.

He had become someone's worst nightmare.

A golden glow flickered through the honeyish air. He turned his masked head to face it, and made out a dark silhouette walking toward him. His clawed right hand reached for his lightsaber, which he selected automatically from the many at his waist. It snapped on, casting a bloody red glow through the hut.

By that light, a man in Jedi robes was revealed, tall and straight-backed. The face beneath the hood was smooth-skinned and calm. His eyes gleamed, containing sorrow and pity. Familiar and yet unfamiliar, known and yet utterly unknown …

The apprentice hissed a low, dangerous sound through his mask's vocoder and crouched like a poised snake, master of Juyo, the most vicious form of lightsaber combat known in the galaxy.

The Jedi drew his own lightsaber—a bright sky blue—and adopted a classic Soresu opening stance, with left arm upraised, palm-down, running parallel to the lightsaber in his right. With his left foot forward he balanced perfectly on his right, ready to defend himself against any attack.

The apprentice didn't keep him waiting. He didn't employ any wild acrobatics or fancy Force moves. He simply lunged, using his whole body as a weapon, his balance and dexterity utterly focused. The dark side thrilled through him, harmonizing perfectly with the anger and hate in his heart. The Jedi was going to die, one way or another. It might as well be now.

Blue blocked red in a spray of energy. The apprentice struck again, higher this time, a deceptively loose blow that hid deadly subtleties beneath its wide swing. The Jedi blocked it, too; just. Soresu was a defensive fighting style well suited to the close confines of the hut, but it wouldn't last forever against the malignant grace of Juyo.

The Jedi came in hard and fast before the apprentice could rally another attack. He cared little if the Jedi hit him, so long as damage was minimal. Close hits left flesh sizzling and armor smoking. The energy he saved on wild dodges he spent on tearing jagged planks from the walls and throwing them at the Jedi's head. All were deflected, but it distracted the man, robbed his attack of some of its momentum. When he paused, the apprentice sent a surge of Sith lightning under his guard.

The Jedi was caught in the flickering storm. His face twisted into a pained grimace. Then he brought his right arm down and placed the blade of his lightsaber directly in the lightning's path. The energy was absorbed by the blade, then bent back upon itself in a superconducting loop, striking its source with more energy than it had originally possessed. The apprentice stiffened as pain coursed up his hands and arms. The agony was unbearable—but bear it he did. His skin melted and warped all over his body, and he gagged on the stink of his own burning flesh. The pain and revulsion only fed the dark side, so the faster the lightning came back to him, the harder and stronger it flowed from him.

The loop couldn't last forever. With a blinding blue flash he and the Jedi were blown far apart, crashing with arms outstretched into the walls of the hut and dropping to the floor. Their lightsabers skittered away in opposite directions, dead.

Flat on his back, the apprentice wheezed through his mask like an asthmatic Gand, only gradually regaining sensation in his arms and legs. His muscles twitched spastically when he tried to move. Acrid steam poured from his mask's narrow eye slits. Fearing that his Jedi opponent might be on his feet before him, he called on all the power of the Force to lift himself bodily into the air. Hanging suspended like a doll, with his feet some centimeters off the ground, he blinked his searing eyes until he could see again.

The Jedi was faring no better. He, too, was upright, but only just. He, too, had lost his lightsaber and not yet managed to reclaim it. The apprentice leered behind his mask. He had several other lightsabers to choose from, belonging to all the Jedi Knights he had killed. All he had to do was select one at random and strike.

Instead he reached out with his left hand and, as his dark Master had done to the first Jedi killed on this spot, long ago, gripped his opponent about the throat with the Force. Still smoking from the lightning attack, the young man jerked abruptly into the air.

They faced each other across the ruined hut, neither touching the ground.

"Kill me," gasped the Jedi, "and you destroy yourself."

The apprentice laughed gloatingly, a hideous sound that bore little relationship to anything made by a human throat. Summoning his lightsaber, he activated it and threw it at the stricken Jedi. The blade went through the Jedi's right shoulder and deactivated when the pommel hit flesh. The Jedi arched his back but didn't cry out. Savoring the moment, the apprentice unhitched one of the other lightsaber hilts from his belt, ignited it, too, and impaled the Jedi again. Over and over he stabbed the Jedi Knight until there were no more hilts at his belt and the ground beneath his victim was stained deep red.

Still the Jedi lived. A flicker of annoyance spoiled the moment, but then he remembered that there was one more lightsaber he hadn't used: the Jedi's own. Snatching it to him, the apprentice ignited the blade, drew his arm back, and stabbed the Jedi Knight through the heart.

That did the trick. The body dropped to the ground, inert, and the apprentice allowed himself to stand properly on the soil. The dark side throbbed through him. He was the living embodiment of power.

Tipping his masked head back, he crowed in triumph like a feral wolf cat.

"I never wanted this for you," whispered a hollow voice out of the shadows.

He spun, lightsaber back in his hand and lit in less time than it took to think about it. Someone else stood in the hut: a man with long dark hair and a Wookiee sash down his front. He looked at the body of the Jedi Knight on the ground, grief and loss in his eyes.

The apprentice went to strike him down, but stopped, recognizing him as the man from two visions: the father of the boy who had been taken and the man he had glimpsed over Nar Shaddaa.

"I never wanted any of this for you," the man said. "I'm sorry, Galen."

Rooted to the spot, the apprentice stared as the Jedi Knight turned to walk back into the shadows. Vision or reality? Truth or fantasy? His mind felt as though it were turning as fast as a pulsar.

"Father, wait!" The voice burst out of him, unfiltered by hideous deformities or the strictures of the mask. Suddenly he was the boy again, whole but alone, standing abandoned in the bloody hut. "Father, no!"

The Jedi Knight walked on without pause and vanished into the shadows.

Collapsing to his knees, the apprentice lowered his head and screamed.

---

A bedraggled figure emerged from the ruined hut, eyes wild and jaw set. With determination, he set off along the dry creekbed, following the directions he had been given in another age, another life. Empty of thought, he let duty sweep him forward. Duty to his Master, to Juno, to Kota, to the Wookiees …

What duty he owed himself, he didn't know. He hadn't realized that there had even been a him to think of outside his relationship with Darth Vader. He had imagined himself simply made, somehow, one of his Master's stranger biological experiments, with no parents and no home but the one he remembered. What if the visions he had endured were real and he had had a family, here on Kashyyyk? How did that affect his place in Vader's schemes? Did it change everything, or nothing?

Juno called on the comlink to ask him if he was all right. He said he was. She asked if he was sure. He said he was. She sounded hurt by his terseness, but he couldn't help that. He was so full of emotion—confusion and doubt, and dismal certainty and hope as well—that he couldn't cope with her feelings on top of it. He was trying his best not to feel at all.

Galen?

He had a job to do.

As he ran through the undergrowth, putting the depthless shadows of the hut behind him, he repeatedly touched his hands, reassured as he never had been before by the feel of skin on skin.

---

The moorings were even larger than he had guessed from the brief plans displayed by the astromech droid. Its mistress's instructions had been simple: destroy the moorings and the skyhook would be ruined. That sounded deceptively easy, given the amount of fortification and security in place.

Simplicity suited him, however. He didn't want to think, to have to agonize over motives and methods. He just wanted to act. With none of the joy he had felt while assaulting the lodge and with none of the challenge offered by the black Imperial Guards on Nar Shaddaa, he plowed through the faceless stormtroopers as a wampa would stride through snow. Sith lightning crackled; bodies broke under his irresistible telekinesis; his mind influenced the decisions of officers, who ordered their underlings to attack one another in droves. None could stand up to him and survive.

When he reached the base of the skyhook, he was momentarily given pause. How to bring about the ruin of six constructs several stories high? Their super-strong materials were designed to handle the stresses of holding the massive station directly above, against all the laws of physics. How would he overcome their resistance?

The answer, as always, lay in the Force. The Force was beyond physics. The Force could not be resisted, when wielded by confident hands. The Force would always be sufficient.

Turning his back on the body-strewn battlefield, he put both hands on the base of the nearest mooring. Closing his eyes and his mind to all forms of distraction, he imagined himself at one with the metal, permacrete, and stone. He felt the mooring's strengths and its weaknesses. He resonated with it, until it was hard to tell where his hands stopped and the mooring began.

When he could achieve no greater focus, he reached out for the dark side and let it guide him.

Energy came like a dam bursting, as wild as every predator on Kashyyyk combined but as pure as a laser. He tilted his head back and relished the wonder and terror of what he had brought into being. This was a power far greater than Sith lightning, designed for one single task. He lost himself utterly in that task. He became destruction.

The mooring shook. Its more delicate components—nanowires, sensitive self-regulating systems, microscopic hydraulic channels—fused almost immediately. Once the complex processes maintaining its stability were disrupted, a chain reaction began that could not be stopped. Pressures mounted in areas close to exceeding their maximum load; hairline cracks formed and spread; a deep vibration sprang up that could not be dampened. Even if left to its own devices, the mooring would shake itself to pieces in minutes.

The apprentice maintained his assault until hairline cracks became gaping rents and the vibration shook the world, howling material agony over the renewed firing of blaster cannons. When the first shower of boiling dust and pebble-sized fragments rained down on him, he decided it was time to step back and take stock—and to prevent some hapless stormtrooper creeping up on him and shooting him in the back.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The mooring was barely recognizable as the same structure. Electrical discharges danced across its conducting surfaces. Ultra-stressed permacrete flowed like treacle. Larger fragments began to fall and he batted them away with the Force, feeling no more drained by his exertion than he would have from a light run. He almost smiled at his accomplishment, but one stark fact sobered him to the core.

One down. Five to go.

The Imperials were rallying. They needed to be reminded of who they were dealing with. While crossing to the next mooring in line, he detonated fuel tanks and exploded ammunition stores. AT-STs cracked open like seedpods and burst into short-lived flame. He reached his target without encountering serious resistance and brought it down as he had the first.

By now the Imperials on the ground were calling for reinforcements from above. A trio of TIE fighters shrieked down through Kashyyyk's atmosphere, stitching the blackened permacrete with needles of fire. He laughed mirthlessly. They considered that a solution?

With a well-timed nudge on the lead TIE fighter's port solar gather panel, he sent it tumbling into the permacrete, where it exploded instantly. The impact shook the ground beneath his feet and sent cracks spreading across its face.

That gave him an idea. When the two remaining TIEs came around for another pass, he sent them both into the third and fifth moorings. The fourth took so much collateral damage that it fared almost as badly as its siblings.

Only one mooring remained.

As he turned to it, he became aware of the clanking of an AT-ST coming from behind him. He turned just in time to deflect a barrage of precision weapons fire from the nose of a walker that was sprinting at him as fast as its two mechanical legs could run. A flurry of concussion grenades followed.

He detonated them all before they could arrive and repulsed the furious blossoming of hot gases in a sphere around him.

The AT-ST didn't take the hint. It was moving fast, bearing down with its flat footpads as though trying to physically trample him. Maybe it was. The walker had registration markings identifying it as belonging to the commander of the Imperial ground forces.

Captain Sturn had come to finish the job at which his underlings had failed so miserably.

The apprentice dodged the stamping feet as they went by and zapped the rear of the walker with lightning. Nothing happened. Sturn's walker obviously possessed a layer of shielding above and beyond that provided to his grunts. The AT-ST's armaments also set it apart from the others, including a long-barreled hunting cannon and what appeared to be a net launcher on its left flank.

Sturn brought the walker about. The apprentice reached out to twist the man's mind, but found it too opaque with anger and resentment; not fear, though. Sturn wasn't the sort of man who would be frightened of one person. He was convinced of his own invincibility, certain that there was no resistance he couldn't quash. The apprentice had met men like him before, many times. The AT-ST's extra weaponry confirmed it. He imagined Sturn hunting Wookiees for sport, when he wasn't persecuting his junior officers for fun and plotting the betrayal of his superiors. The apprentice had dispatched many such men in the service of his Master.

The apprentice smiled with no trace of humor. Normally he liked nothing better than putting beings in their place, but this was just irritating.

Sturn's walker jogged ponderously toward him. He considered his options. It would be a simple matter to crush the walker as he would a faulty comlink, collapsing the casing and instantly killing the man within. He could play with the walker as he had played with the two by the lodge and blow it up from within. He could even use it as a battering ram to destroy the last mooring, thereby killing two spade-headed smookas with one swipe. The grim irony in that appealed to him.

He deflected another round of cannon fire into the mooring and noticed only then that the thick cable leading up to the skyhook station was visibly vibrating. Strange surges rushed up and down its length as though it had been plucked by a giant hand. He shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and looked upward. The skyhook was faintly visible, as was a cloud of debris coming down from above. Small specks quickly resolved into objects as big as boulders. They were growing rapidly in size.

He performed a quick mental calculation. The debris would arrive about the same time as Sturn's walker. Ideal.

He reached out and crumpled the walker's cannon and grenade launchers. For a moment, the only sounds came from his lightsaber and the heavy tread of the AT-ST.

He straightened. Through the command viewport, he saw a man with a red face wearing what looked like Wookiee fur trim on his uniform. The captain's mouth was open, bellowing orders at his hapless gunner. The apprentice couldn't hear the words, but he could imagine.

The walker reared up one leg to stamp him into the ground.

At that moment the debris hit with all the force of a hundred shooting stars, striking everything around the base of the skyhook—the sixth mooring included—and crushing the walker into scrap metal. Debris went everywhere. The noise was unimaginable. The apprentice didn't flinch or move in the slightest as rubble rain impacted about him. He only watched, with satisfaction, as the skyhook base ripped free of the planet and recoiled like a whip into the upper atmosphere. The station exploded shortly thereafter, briefly outshining the sun, even through the dust and smoke of his handiwork.

The rain of rubble ceased. He remained exactly where he was, hypnotized by the slowly fading star in the sky, until the Rogue Shadow swooped down directly in front of him, repulsors whining to hold itself just above the ground.

He blinked, realizing only then that Juno was trying to talk to him.

"I said, it's done. Hop aboard. Let's get out of here."

He moved as though in another vision, stepping lightly up onto the open ramp but feeling like he weighed a thousand tons.

With a piercing whine, the cloaked ship angled up from the cratered ground and made for free space.

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Well Folks, that was part 8 of this story.

Hope you enjoyed.

Part 9'll be out soon.

Until next time, this is Grubkiller, over and out.